With characteristic of simple and convenient operation, stable performance, less maintenance work, flexible specifications and wide range of applications, the thermal transfer printer using thermal print heads becomes the mainstream printing equipment in the bar code/radio frequency identification (RFID) label printing, security sign printing and other fields.
The printer consumables used by the traditional thermal transfer printer comprise the thermal transfer ribbon and the printing media which may be plain paper or polymer paper. When both the thermal transfer ribbon and the printing media are transferred to the heating point of the printing head, due to the heating of the printing head the ink coating on the thermal transfer ribbon is melted and transferred to the printing media under the pressure of the printing head, such that the contents need to be printed are shown.
In the prior art, the thermal transfer printer is provided with separate supply devices for the thermal transfer ribbon and the printing media. Normally, the thermal transfer ribbon and the printing media are mounted in/on the printer ribbon box/shaft and the paper box/shaft in the form of ribbon rolls and paper rolls, respectively. Such that the thermal transfer ribbon and printing media can be produced separately with low production cost. At the same time it is very flexible to match the print media well with different kinds of thermal transfer ribbon in order to meet the printout quality requirements.
However, the thermal transfer printer with separate thermal transfer ribbon supply and printing media supply requires a large space for consumables installation, resulting in a large footprint for the printer. And the size matters much for handheld/mobile printers. At the same time, the consumables installation process for this type of printer is complex, thus giving poor user experiences.